The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Barrence Whitfield & The Savages ready to rock New Haven
NEW HAVEN — Barrence Whitfield is a soul screamer who can conjure up spirits and raise the dead with the best of them, and he’s coming back to Cafe Nine on Friday — so LOOK OUT!
If you’re the kind of person who belongs at a Barrence Whitfield & The Savages show, chances are you know it by now. They have, after all, been doing this for more than 30 years at this point.
But if you don’t — get with it! Crawl out from under your rock and get on the dance floor! These guys really rock!
Showtime is 9:30 p.m., with New York City’s Daddy Long Legs opening. Admission is $15, available in advance at cafenine.com. Cafe Nine is at 250 State St., at the corner of State and Crown.
Whitfield, even at age 62, can still jump around onstage like a teenager — or at least sort of like he did 30 years ago when they all played at The Nightshift Cafe in Naugatuck — and his band remains one of the hottest bands on Planet Earth.
For a few years now, co-founder and original (and former Lyres and DMZ) guitarist Peter Greenberg and original (and also former Lyres) bassist Phil Lenker have been back on board.
If you’ve never seen Barrence Whitfield & The Savages — one of the best things ever to come out of Boston — do their thing at Cafe Nine, you are missing a soulful force of nature. Luckily, you have a chance to rectify that. Don’t blow it!
The longtime key to what makes Barrence Whitfield & The Savages great (other than Greenberg’s chunky, twangy garage-rock/rockabilly guitar and Whitfield’s remarkable ability to SCREEEEEAM his lyrics in so many different ways) is their ability to mine deep to unearth forgotten sources of music.
They do that like the longtime present and
former record store employees that they are.
Whitfield and the Savages have this thing about digging up little-known and long-forgotten rock and R&B gems, reworking them and throwing them out there as new songs.
They did it many years ago with songs like “Big Mamou” — their hoppedup version of a Louisiana classic — and “Juicy Fruit,” the obscure Rudy Greene jump blues tune that Whitfield sped up to something approaching triple speed and turned into a classic bit of punk soul.
On their last Bloodshot Records album, “Under The Savage Sky,” they did it with Timmy “Mr. Soul Satisfaction” Willis’ “I’m a Full Grown Man,” Kid Thomas’ “The Wolf Pack,” Eddie Snow’s “I’m a Good Man” and Mercy Baby’s “Rock and Roll Baby.”
And they’re STILL doing it on their latest, just-released Bloodshot Records album, “Soul Flowers of Titan.”
Whitfield, born Barry White in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1955, is by no means a stranger to Greater New Haven. Besides those scorching shows at The Nightshift, he’s played a number of times in more recent years at Cafe Nine.